It Should Have Been Me
by Maren1978
Summary: To say that Mac is dealing poorly with the aftermaths of the events in 3x22 is putting it quite nicely. In fact, he is going down in a whirl of grief, guilt, disconcertion and self-hate. Matty has come over for a heart-to-heart... WARNING: Spoilers for the finale and season 3 in general! This won't make a lot of sense, if you haven't seen the episode.


MACGYVER'S HOUSE, SEVERAL DAYS AFTER THE 'MASON INCIDENT'

IT'S PAST MIDNIGHT ALREADY, BUT NOBODY IS EVEN THINKING OF SLEEPING ANYTIME SOON

Matty was grateful that Bozer had alerted her to the fact that his best friend and roommate - and her best agent - wasn't handling recent events well at all. Giving him space to sort through everything at his own pace, as he'd insistently requested, obviously wasn't having the desired effect; on the contrary. Instead of gradually getting better, he was actively working himself deeper into a poisonous state of guilt, shame, self-punishment and depression. Bozer was seriously worried about him. He'd seen his childhood friend bounce back countless times from some nasty stuff that would have broken anybody else, but this was different. Before anyone else knew it, the brilliant agent had slipped away to some dark, scary place inside his head and - by the look of it - he was still retreating further at an alarming rate.

After Bozer had greeted her at the door, he pointed her towards the deck without saying a word, his face uncharacteristically grave. She approached the huddled figure that was crouching on one of the benches around the empty fireplace. She didn't want to startle him, so she announced her presence by clearing her throat loudly, but he showed no reaction whatsoever.

_Oh boy!_

* * *

Mac was very aware of the fact that everyone was worrying about him and it made him feel even more ashamed. He didn't want it.

_I don't deserve it! All the people who have left me were right. I'm not worth it!_

He sighed inwardly when he heard someone enter the deck. By the small footsteps and the deliberately loud 'harrumph', he could tell that it was Matty.

_What's she doing here? Doesn't she have an agency to run, or something?_

He couldn't bring himself to move or even look at her. All he wanted to do right now was sit here and wallow in his misery. He knew, however, that he would not be granted such luxury. He knew they meant well, but…

_Why can't they just mind their own business? I'm not worth caring about!_

"Hey Blondie," she addressed him.

_If I just don't react at all, maybe she'll go away?_

She didn't.

"How's it going?" she went on conversationally. "I heard you're not doing too well. Wanna talk?"

_NO! Just stay away from me, everyone! People around me are in serious danger of dying an untimely and violent death!_

* * *

The young man didn't take his eyes off the patch of wooden floor between his feet that he'd been unseeingly staring at for who knows how long. He wasn't moving at all. Not even his hands were fidgeting, which Matty found extremely concerning. Even fast asleep he was never this motionless. Whenever she'd seen him this still, he was unconscious and, more often than not, seriously injured. An utterly still MacGyver was *_unsettling*._

The short woman sat down on the rim of the fire pit, facing her agent. She took a minute to take in his appearance. She'd never seen him this miserable. He was deliberately avoiding her gaze and he looked unshaven, disheveled and worn. His face had a greyish tinge to it that made him look old. Matty felt safe to assume that he'd neither eaten anything worth mentioning, nor slept properly since their encounter with Mason and the following revelations from his father. Whenever he succumbed to exhaustion and passed out, he was most likely going through the deepest and darkest corners of hell in the nightmares that were bound to haunt him.

"I see you're not in a talking mood. That's okay with me. Mind if I talk?"

He still didn't react. He had yet to show any sign that he was even aware of Matty's presence. She finally realized what Jack had meant by Mac getting lost inside his ginormous head and it was scary! He was in desperate need of someone to drag him out of it, so she took his silence for consent and jumped right onto it.

"Are you sure you want to attend the service?" Matty asked him. "Everyone will understand if you don't feel up to it."

His only physical reaction was an insignificant hitch in his breathing. His face remained expressionless, petrified, and his usually bright blue eyes were dark with pain and shame. For two long minutes, nobody said a word. Then, at last, Mac spoke, possibly for the first time in two days.

"I have to," he insisted in a toneless voice, which was rough from disuse and didn't quite sound like his own. "I owe him that, at least."

_I deserve this pain! There wouldn't even be a service if it weren't for me. I can't cheat my way out of it._

He heard Matty sigh heavily. "Look, Blondie, I know you don't want to hear this right now, but I'm telling you anyway: It wasn't your fault! So please stop punishing yourself!"

_All the pain in the world wouldn't be enough to even scratch the surface of my guilt._

"I'm not punishing myself." The words spilled out of his mouth automatically, out of a reflex he couldn't suppress.

"Of course you're not," Matty agreed dryly. He still couldn't bring himself to look at her, but out of the corner of his eyes he saw her sadly shake her head. That made him feel even guiltier. In a kind, almost motherly voice she went on, "You're beating yourself up for events you had absolutely no control over. It was your father, who decided to choose you over Mason's son and it was Charlie, who decided to sacrifice himself."

_OUCH!_

* * *

At this, the blond jerked violently, which was probably the liveliest reaction anyone had gotten out of him for days. When he finally looked at Matty, there was raw rage in his eyes and his shoulders were heaving as he was visibly fighting for control. The last few days had taken his toll on him and his almost never-wavering composure.

Nevertheless, Matty was glad that he reacted at all. Since the Mason incident and the following fallout with James, Mac had crawled so deeply into his own head that Matty feared that he might not find his way back. Normally, Jack would have pulled him out of it and caught him afterwards, but now that he was away for an indefinite period… Something inside the young genius seemed to have died, so any reaction was a step in the right direction. She was happy to face whatever he'd throw at her.

"Don't you dare blame Charlie," he hissed angrily through tightly clenched teeth, but his anger was short-lived, as if he'd quickly run out of energy. Matty watched him closely. The muscles in his jaw worked and his breathing intensified. "He took the decision, so I didn't have to…" His hoarse voice faded into nothingness as slight tremors were running through his body. He was barely holding it together. He swallowed convulsively and dropped his gaze to his feet again. As quickly as it had come, the rage in his eyes had faded and been replaced by pure agony. The next words he uttered were so soft and broken, that the Director of Operations barely caught them.

"It should have been me!"

The short but tough woman felt her heart break and for a moment, she had to steady herself to keep her voice neutral. "What makes you say that?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Mac snorted exasperatedly.

"No," Matty replied simply, "care to explain?"

She tried to meet his eyes, but his gaze avoided hers and he intently studied his knees instead. "They died for me, and I didn't even know about it then." He swallowed. "Charlie might have 'chosen' his sacrifice," the quotation marks hung in the air between them, "but what about Mason's son? He didn't have a choice! No, my dear old Daddy decided it for him!"

Mac's voice started to fail him and he paused to get it back under control. Matty waited patiently for him to collect himself enough to continue.

"Tell me, Matty, how many more were they? How many lives have ended because he prioritized me above them? How many?" A single tear slipped through the cracks in his defenses and got sucked up by the fabric of his jeans.

"Let me ask you a question in return: How many lives haven't ended because you saved them?"

Their eyes met for a second and the expression in the young man's gaze drove a ragged knife through her heart. There was so much pain, but the hollow emptiness and the haunted look in it was even worse.

"That's different! It's my job to save people."

"How many?" Matty insisted, as if Mac hadn't spoken. He gave a tiny headshake, but pondered on the question.

"I have honestly no idea."

"That's right, you don't and neither do I. That's because they're too many to even roughly estimate, right? And you're putting your life on the line on a daily basis to do what you do. With little to no consideration of your own health, I might add."

"So it's okay if, every now and then, someone kicks the bucket in my place? Is that what you're saying?" He glared at his boss. Matty held his gaze and waited. She knew he wasn't done. He took a slightly shuddering breath and went on, "Let me tell you, just in case you missed the memo: I'm not worth more than others."

"You're not worth less, either, Mac. You seem to have missed _that_ memo, as you keep forgetting it," the woman stated softly but determinedly, "For a smart guy like you, you're remarkably forgetful when it comes to your own well-being."

Both fell silent for a minute, each hanging onto their own thoughts. Suddenly, the blond agent drew in a sharp breath and blurted out, "He had no right to make that decision for me!"

"You're talking about your father now."

"He had no right," Mac repeated as if he hadn't heard Matty, his voice wavering. "He obviously kept making my choices for me since I was a little kid! He dropped out of my life without so much as a word, only to play the secret puppeteer in the background..." He shook his head and snorted a bitter laugh, "That's what I was for him, a puppet! Or a chess-piece in that sick spy-game he's playing." He swallowed against the lump in his throat. "I'd just partly gotten over the fact that he'd been secretly watching and steering me all my life, and now I learn that he has- has literally played master of life and death – just – just to save me!"

Matty watched the mixture of emotions flicker over the tired and sunken face. Her top agent looked decades older than a week ago. Additionally, he seemed to carry around a ton on each shoulder, weighing him down.

"What do you think, how many lives was Jack forced to take in order to protect you throughout the years as your Overwatch?"

Mac flinched at Jack's name and started biting his lip. The recent departure of his long-standing partner and father figure had been another shattering blow to his carefully maintained walls. Outwardly, he had taken it fairly well, but it was yet another disastrous, life-changing event that he had to compartmentalize away. Matty wasn't too surprised that he'd at last reached the point where he couldn't just store away any more tragedy without properly dealing with it.

"That's different! They were enemies, who would have killed me if he hadn't gotten them first. Mason's son was one of our own, and Oversight chose my life over his. Just like that. He had no right to do that. It violates everything I stand for; everything I _live_ for."

Matty hated herself for pushing him like that, but she knew that treading on eggshells around him wasn't going to help him.

"Look, Blondie, you have every right to be upset, but he's your father. Of _course,_ he chose you over others! That's what _every_ parent would do. By the way, what would Jack have done if he'd had to choose between your life and someone else's?"

Mac had already inhaled deeply enough for a harsh protest against anything that even remotely sounded like defense for his father's decisions, but at the last question he let it out uselessly.

_That's a low blow, Matty! Leave Jack out of this!_

But instead of rising in anger, he said nothing and chewed hard on his lower lip. He suddenly had a huge lump in his throat, which he couldn't manage to gulp down. He knew _ exactly_ what Jack would have decided and that thought troubled him. He couldn't bring himself to say it. For the thousandth time he wished that Jack were there to piece his world back together. Jack would crack a stupid joke or pun, mess up words on purpose to distract him, tell some wildly invented story that was going nowhere, or grace everyone who hasn't asked for it with his dreadful karaoke.

Heck, Mac hated to admit it, but he even missed Jack's horrible singing!

Despite all the incredible comfort and support that the rest of his Phoenix family self-evidently provided, he was sure he'd never felt as lonely and lost and vulnerable as in this moment. He missed his partner so dearly, it hurt physically. He couldn't talk about Jack now, not without falling apart completely, so he hastily steered the conversation back into somewhat safer waters; being pissed at his biological father, for instance.

"Leave Jack out of this; we were talking about James! He quit being my father 18 years ago. He has no business meddling in my life anymore! If he didn't think he could stand looking at me, or whatever his reasoning was, why couldn't he just have _stayed_ _away_ from me?"

Matty winced. She couldn't deny that he had a point there. The way James MacGyver had treated little Angus after his mother had passed away hadn't exactly been beneficial for the kid's well-being, to say the least. She sighed.

"That's a question you really ought to discuss with your father."

"I absolutely don't want him in my life anymore," he retorted hotly. "The farther away from me he is, the better!"

"I don't mean to justify his actions, on the contrary. He has definitely made a huge number of terrible mistakes, but he does care about you, Mac," Matty said earnestly.

Mac rolled his eyes. "He's been hiding that pretty well," he jeered.

"Yeah, well, I'm afraid that he never realized that being a Dad isn't just another science project. Parenthood is more than adding the right ingredients and performing the right steps to receive a predefined result. There are certainly dozens of areas where he's brilliant, but social skills weren't among them, that much is for sure," the dark-haired woman conceded with a sad half-smile. "As far as I know, he's still convinced that leaving you was the best he could do for you."

The hurt and betrayal on Mac's face won a new quality. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth in anger. "Social skills or not, how could he ever think that? How can a father believe that abandoning his kid is in their best interest?"

Matty hesitated before she answered, "That is not my story to tell. You should work that out with him personally, _ before _ you decide whether you want him in your life or not. You'd want to have all the facts in advance."

"I'm tired of him making my choices for me! It's _my_ life and I want to live it _my_ way! I don't know if anything I've done so far was truly my decision or in some twisted way orchestrated by _him_!" His lower lip quivered and he caught it with his teeth again. Matty couldn't quite help another sad smile. Damn, he was so right!

"So take charge, go tell him exactly what you've just told me," she encouraged. "Say what you have to say and ask what you need to know. You'll feel better, I promise! And then you can decide if you want to see him in the future or not."

_Feel better? I don't even want to feel better. I have no business feeling better ever again!_

* * *

"He'll just try to take charge of my life again," Mac admitted in a small voice after a pause.

Matty blinked, equally surprised and appalled.

_Oh James, what have you done to your kid?_

"You're actually _scared_ of him, aren't you?"

He said nothing, just sucked harder on his lip, likely drawing blood by now. Matty waited patiently and, after a minute or two, he looked her in the eyes with a troubled expression on his face.

"He's managed to run my life from a distance for almost 20 years without me noticing he even existed. He can do it again anytime. With the resources he has at his disposal, there's nowhere I'd be safe from him."

Matty blamed his currently deeply depressed state for that train of thought.

"I think we can agree that he was a crappy father," she began, earning an exasperated snort from Mac, "but he is not an enemy you have to run and hide from. Since when is running and hiding your SOP, anyway?"

Mac closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it even more disheveled than it had been before. When he looked back at Matty, he was furious again.

"You're another one who's telling me what to do!" he snapped at her. She remained unperturbed and just gave him a teasing smile.

"Weeeell, last time I checked I was still your boss..."

"I'm not talking about work…." He trailed off and turned his face away from her in a futile attempt to hide that he was fighting tears again.

"So what are you talking about?" Matty asked softly, although she knew the answer. The blond in front of her swallowed several times and took a couple of deep breaths to regain some of his composure.

"You— you came all the way here to- to talk me out of going to my friend's funeral tomorrow! Everyone thinks that they know what's good for me, because- because I seemingly don't!" He was clearly upset. "Don't you think that, by now, I should be old enough to decide such things on my own? Oh wait…" He interrupted himself and displayed a grotesquely exaggerated 'I'm-thinking-hard-and-am-suddenly-struck-by-a-brilliant-idea'-face, "I got it! I can't be trusted to decide _anything_ by myself… Never have been, obviously…" His voice died in his throat and he sagged. Elbows on his knees, he let his head fall forward into his hands and pulled at fistfuls of hair. Matty closed her eyes for a moment and breathed deeply, but was careful not to sigh audibly.

_Aw Mac!_

Tentatively, she leaned forward as well and laid a small hand on one of his hunched shoulders. When he didn't flinch or pull away, she squeezed it reassuringly.

"You know that's not the case, Mac, although I understand why you're feeling that way right now. You have _a lot_ to process after everything that's happened. So _please_, stop swallowing everything and start dealing with it! You're our Baby Einstein, which means I don't have to explain to you what happens when you fill a container beyond its capacity. The pressure will build up and eventually, it'll just _burst_!" She mimicked an enormous explosion with her hands. "Talk to someone! We are all here for you. Bozer, Riley, Desi, Leanna, me… Take your pick! Besides, the Phoenix are keeping around an armada of highly capable psychologists. They're not there for decoration, you know? They're being paid anyway, so they might as well work." She winked at him mischievously. Mac squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead into his palms. He said nothing, but it was clear that he was thinking hard.

When he reopened his eyes and looked at her, they were still light-years away from their usual brightly sparkling selves, but they were at least a bit clearer and more focused. Something else was visible on his face now.

Resignation.

"So you think I shouldn't go to the funeral tomorrow," he stated flatly.

"It doesn't matter what I think."

"But—but you said- I-," Mac sputtered incredulously. Was she kidding him?

"I merely said that it is up to you to decide. I tried to tell you that it would be okay if you chose not to go. You shouldn't feel obligated."

"As I told you before, I can't _not_ go! I owe that to Charlie, after all."

"Charlie would hate to see you misuse his funeral to cause yourself pain," Matty ventured cautiously, knowing she might be crossing a line. Mac glared at her and leaned back to get out of her reach.

"You'd try anything to stop me from going, wouldn't you? Even throw punches below the belt!" This time, the look of hurt and betrayal was meant for Matty, but she didn't waver.

"I don't intend to stop you from going."

"Oh, you don't?" he inquired in an mockingly incredulous tone of voice, eyeing her half skeptically, half angrily.

"No, I certainly don't," she confirmed, "but I want you to go for the right reasons."

Mac stared at her blankly. "Reasons? What are you talking about?"

"If you're going to give a dear friend a proper goodbye, you are more than welcome. However, if you plan on going because it will hurt and you think you have to go because you deserve to suffer and need to punish yourself, then I need to step in to protect you from yourself!"

Both fell silent, letting the words sink in.

Several times, Mac opened his mouth to argue, but no words came out. Matty allowed herself the tiniest inward chuckle as she watched him opening and closing his mouth like a fish on dry land. He suddenly jumped to his feet and started pacing the deck. He mumbled to himself under his breath, exactly the way he did when he was calculating complicated formulas and equations in his head. The only thing missing for that image was the scribbling over some glass-pane with a permanent marker…

* * *

An hour later, Bozer finally managed to talk his friend into a shower and a light meal, which he took in gratefully, but without saying anything else.

Matty had left shortly before, not without making Bozer promise to call her immediately, whenever he thought that he or Mac might need her support. He was beyond relieved. He had felt very bad about bothering his boss and not being able to get through to Mac himself, but now he was glad he did. They needed to do this as a team, as the family they were. Everyone would play their part in putting his friend back together; nobody could do it alone. Knowing that he didn't have to made him feel a lot better already.

After his nighttime dinner, Mac agreed on trying to catch up on some badly needed sleep. Tomorrow would be a new day, and he'd have to make a lot of hard decisions tomorrow and in the near future.

However, after Matty's visit, he felt that he might be a bit more ready to face them.


End file.
